Handmade Sweets

Here we are again, on a lovely Sunday with a few extra moments (finally!) to write!

It seems that 2017 has so far been about facing my (cake) fears! Which is good! In my life, a fear will nag at me incessantly until I finally stand up and deal with it, so cakes will be no different.

I have dabbled with airbrushing in bits and pieces, while learning to adjust the settings on my airbrush and test out the colors.

I’ve also done an entire white fondant cake into dark colors, such as this style. (This works wonderfully well as a way to avoid black or dark fondant or buttercream!)

I won’t deny that the cake above is really pretty and somewhat impressive looking, but it does come at a price! That would be me, heart pounding, hands shaking, second guessing and panicking.

This week, I once again decided to give another little push at my discomfort towards airbrushing. While I know that I am creative, I feel that I am creative in a structured design aspect as opposed to a wild artist aspect, so painting and things that are more artistic can sometimes throw me a bit. Such is the way with airbrushing. When other cake artists airbrush, I see gorgeous, vibrant colors spraying wildly at a cake and turning it into a stunning canvas of perfectly dispersed color molecules.

But when I airbrush? Ugh… not so much!

However, I do see the potential of an airbrushed cake and I’m determined to at least partially master it.

This week, my biggest project was an electric guitar cake! Not just any electric guitar – the specific one that the birthday boy owned. And it was not just a plain old guitar, but one with a detailed pattern and colors. This one!

I knew right off the bat that some airbrushing was going to be needed. After much brainstorming and mulling it over with my husband (which I do often), I decided to use fondant to create a similar design pattern and airbrush the color to achieve the purple edge effect.

It was not without it’s challenges (never forget that any lumps and bumps in your surface pick up airbrush color), and I am positive there is a purple layer of color dust coating my entire bakery, but it turned out pretty well!

All the tiny edible details were super fun to create. I chose to go with silver floral wire for the strings. I decided that it was more important to me that they look realistic than be completely edible, and I was quite happy with my choice.

Due to the amount of servings needed, I chose to create the neck and head of this guitar out of foam core covered with fondant and other edible elements (please, no angry musicians being mad at me for my lack of guitar knowledge and terminology!) and propped up by clear bubble tea straws (which you can see in this photo).

Oh, and the wooden board that this guitar is sitting on is actually a silver cake drum covered with white fondant and decorated/painted, and you might notice that I use this look quite often on my cake boards. If anyone is interested in learning how I create this, let me know and I will put something together!